E.R. is right. I suspect more than half of the ratings given are by people who didn’t even play the games at all and just rated them five stars for the points. It’s the only possible explanation as to why some games that don’t even work properly still get scores above 3.0.

But I second the motion. Real Time MMOs are fine for crap like Facebook or for gaming idly at the office, but beyond that, the only function of RT is to test the player’s patience and make them more apt to spend money on “speed up” functions. Most of the MMOs being featured on Kongregate are, in this way, nothing more than incredibly shallow cash-grab schemes that they should know better than to host at all, much less provide badges to.

Honestly, this makes me think it’s time for Kongregate to divulge how exactly they decide which games do or do not receive badges. Because based on some of the utter garbage that has received badges in contrast to some otherwise good games that went overlooked, I suspect the deciding factor doesn’t have anything to do with quality.

Actually, people who just rate 5 stars for a free point don’t actually play the game and so their rating ends up not getting factored in (because most PBBG’s choose to scrub those ratings).

Don’t get me wrong, I hate PBBG’s and hope they never get badged ever again. But I’m also realistic in that I know there are plenty of people out there who do enjoy those games (which is why they’re generally highly rated, because the overwhelming majority of the ratings that count are from people who play it and therefore enjoy it). And as long as people enjoy those games, they’re going to be rated highly, and they’re going to keep getting badges.

But, as Zynga has shown, this genre is basically a scorched Earth genre and it’s burning itself out rather quickly. Just be patient and these types of games will die out eventually. Alternatively you can do what adv0 suggested, which is rate the game 1/5, make sure your rating counts (by playing past character creation), and encourage other people who you know who also hate this genre to do the same.

These threads seriously need to stop. You do not need to make so many threads over and over again for the same topic. Consolidate it to one thread. You are not any more important than the OP of any other thread on this topic.

Inb4haters

Just because you cannot understand why some people(like myself) like the genre, does not mean that you should feel that it is at all reasonable to stop badging them. This thought is absurd.

I don’t understand why people assume that everyone who just plays a game without rating it (these people do exist, but are not nearly as numerous as you think) rates a game 5. Just as many of them rate the game 1 (or some other number) as ones who rate the game 5.

Honestly, this makes me think it’s time for Kongregate to divulge how exactly they decide which games do or do not receive badges.

1) Rating
2) Working API
3) Cooperation with the developer

I have played a ton of MMOs on this site, some quite good, some horribly bad. And through it all, I have never spent money on any of them. In fact, the only game I have ever spent Kreds on is one of the Bloons Tower Defense games (I forget which one) so I could get one of the badges easier. Those people who think MMOs are all about cash-grabbing fail to note that the vast majority of MMO players (~90%) never pay a cent on the games.

You don’t like games that make you wait? That’s your right. But some of us do.

I don’t like games that make you do the same thing multiple times just to progress in a game, or games in which you have to play over and over to optimize your skill past a certain level. That’s my right. But other people do like these games, and it’s not my place to state that these types of games should be removed from the site.

A game is a game is a game. It doesn’t matter whether you think the game has any gameplay value or quality to it or not. What matters is what the community thinks. As long as a genre remains popular, games from that genre will receive high ratings and will be more likely to get badges, regardless of what you think.

The most popular game does not equal the best game, I get that. But there’s no better measure that Kongregate (or anyone else) can use to judge that.

1. Kong gets revenue from MMO’s.
2. Some E-based MMO’s are crap, some are decent.
3. E-system and “buy-a-random-number-of pixels-to-pump-a-char” approach (i.e. all those chests with random premium gear etc.) are controversial to say the least.
4. Some MMO badges require really much time. (1)
5. MMO’s #of users which devs/Kong may use to attract possible investors and show good overall statistic is semi-inflated due to unknown but I suppose big % of those who play only for badges and then quit.

Despite the fact that they affect each other, each item listed above is a separate issue.

I don’t think there’s any need to BURNWITHFIRE smth. you don’t like but causes you no harm. So maybe just do not rush for every possible badge unless you really want it or unless you are ready to play certain MMO? That was Captain Obvious :D
-
(1) I’m playing Clash of Dragons for the last two months every evening just to get last badge. I almost love the game, and it’s the only reason I went for that badge. At same time there’re many not-MMO badges that I doubt I’d ever go for cause some of those “normal” games cause me physical pain when I attempt to play them. :D

I try to make a difference between stuff that’s distinctly Not My Thing, and stuff that I feel is outright bad. I don’t like Tower Defense for the most part, but I recognize it’s appeal for its audience, and I’ll typically only bother rating it if it’s unusually good or unusually terrible in a technical rather than personal taste sense (excessive balance or stability issues, for instance). I don’t like RTS or FPS, mostly on the grounds that I’m terrible at them, and likewise abstain unless there’s some sort of standout characteristic that makes it unusually good or bad.

MMOs, unfortunately, are most often built with the express purpose of putting forth the minimum effort possible to abusively extort money from a very small subsection of kids with their parents’ credit card numbers. I find this abhorrent as a practice, artless and insulting as a programmer, and in practice it often doesn’t even matter because they’re almost always lazy enough in their construction to warrant a 1/5 on their own lack of merit. There have been MMOs on this site that actually bothered to be games. I can count them on half of one hand.

Personally, I think most multiplayer games (specifically MMOs) should only have one or two relatively simple badges to get, to introduce people to the game. People do enjoy MMOs, I know, but in terms of badges MMOs are overrepresented. I understand they bring in revenue and kong wants to increase their exposure, but they could do this through say… badges that take 20 mins or 1-2 hours. That way at least time spent on badges would be closer to the representation of games on this site without limiting MMO exposure or aggravating the kong userbase so much.

The biggest offender of this was Sacred Seasons 2. It took months of dedicated playing to get all the badges for that game, I’m really not sure what kongregate was thinking there. Oh, I read the forums going around at the time, about how these badges wouldn’t really take “that long”, but that was proven false. Even for an endurance badge, I think months of playing hours every day is a bit extreme.

There are a ton of explanations above, so I’ll save myself some time and say this, short and sweet.

I hate most of those MMO games, I wish they didn’t get badges. It doesn’t matter because they will get badges because people do like them and Kong makes money that way. So I tolerate them because I truly believe that Kongregate deserves the revenue that they get from these games.

I have played a ton of MMOs on this site, some quite good, some horribly bad. And through it all, I have never spent money on any of them. In fact, the only game I have ever spent Kreds on is one of the Bloons Tower Defense games (I forget which one) so I could get one of the badges easier. Those people who think MMOs are all about cash-grabbing fail to note that the vast majority of MMO players (~90%) never pay a cent on the games.

And I am in the same exact boat as you. I only ever spent kreds on Bloons Tower Defense (4, which I’m farily certain is the one you are talking about too) while I’ve played many crappy MMO’s for the badges only. Never have I spent my kreds on those games yet I have quite a few of the badges. However, that’s not to say I haven’t been extremely tempted to spend money on them just to get the badge. But I have self control, I didn’t think those games actually deserved my money so I just held tight and I always end up getting the badge in the end. So can anyone.

I agree that there’s certainly been less, but I kind of want to throw energy games into this category as well. Looking back (at MMOs/Energy based games) we’ve got Clash of the Dragons, Epic War Saga, Realm of the Mad God (< so much ouch), Swords and Potions, Call of the Gods. Those are the MMOs I believe which have gotten at least one hard badge in the last year (sometimes two! And boy are those endurance badges). Granted, a few of those have a stronger single-player component, but most have a strong multiplayer presence.

I think I’m mostly forever scarred from Sacred Seasons 2 though. =( I mercifully (and mercilessly) beg we never get badges like that again.

I hate most of those MMO games, I wish they didn’t get badges. It doesn’t matter because they will get badges because people do like them and Kong makes money that way. So I tolerate them because I truly believe that Kongregate deserves the revenue that they get from these games.

I also think people should make sure their adblockers are turned off, so MMOs don’t become kong’s primary revenue source if they aren’t already.

What? Clash of the Dragons has a hard badge, and it’s like the second most recent energy-based MMO badged.

Technically that got an additional hard badge on top of the previous badges from early 2012. They’d (gregismojo) been wanting to add that hard badge ever since the game originally got badges, it was just that the developer finally followed up and updated the API.

TL;DR_1 – Kong’s a business, and will do things business-end first rather than consumer-end first — regardless of whether they understand that it actually hurt them.

TL;DR_2 – The real problem is that neither significant revenue stream for Kongregate has proven to work over the long term. No one respects in-your-face internet advertising (it’s value is in ‘impressions on users’ rather than anything tangible) and Zynga has been down the freemium road before, and Kong is blindly/faithfully following. We’ve seen where that road goes.

What I do not understand is how is waiting bad. There are 1,000+ plus games on this site. Just play a 2nd game while you wait. Waiting is a part of the game, it sucks, but go play a different game, walk out side, read a book, pick up a DS, take a nap, there is no limit to what you can do, come back, and burn the extra energy again. Earn your badges, and then never play it again, but complaining about it just seems dumb to me.

What I do not understand is how is waiting bad. There are 1,000+ plus games on this site. Just play a 2nd game while you wait. Waiting is a part of the game, it sucks, but go play a different game, walk out side, read a book, pick up a DS, take a nap, there is no limit to what you can do, come back, and burn the extra energy again. Earn your badges, and then never play it again, but complaining about it just seems dumb to me.

You said it yourself, waiting sucks, which is why it’s bad. I don’t want a game to dictate when and how I can play it. (I do agree that complaining about it with petitions accomplishes nothing, though, which is why I earn the badges and move on.)

What I do not understand is how is waiting bad. There are 1,000+ plus games on this site. Just play a 2nd game while you wait. Waiting is a part of the game, it sucks, but go play a different game, walk out side, read a book, pick up a DS, take a nap, there is no limit to what you can do, come back, and burn the extra energy again. Earn your badges, and then never play it again, but complaining about it just seems dumb to me.

You said it yourself, waiting sucks, which is why it’s bad. I don’t want a game to dictate when and how I can play it. (I do agree that complaining about it with petitions accomplishes nothing, though, which is why I earn the badges and move on.)

There are all kinds of games that have badges, and some are more endurance challenges then waiting, are they just as bad? For the most part, it sorta fun to play the wait ones also.

Just as many of them rate the game 1 (or some other number) as ones who rate the game 5.

I doubt it, simply because empathy is inherent to our nature. Between helping out an unknown Developer with his game and destroying his hopes without justification, I doubt there are many people who would do the latter.

Just as many of them rate the game 1 (or some other number) as ones who rate the game 5.

I doubt it, simply because empathy is inherent to our nature. Between helping out an unknown Developer with his game and destroying his hopes without justification, I doubt there are many people who would do the latter.

actually spending some time on comments of some games here im starting to believe it is entirely opposite of what you just wrote example one would be grammer nazi’s who when lozeing an argument correct your grammer and then the community just accepts that as an argument just as valid as the one you just made and start supporting them

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